


A Last Request

by jujubiest



Series: Barrison One-Shots [8]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Also he has really messed up ideas of love and duty/destiny/whatever, Character Death, Dying Wish, Eobard looks like Harrison, Gen, Harribard, blood cw, unrelenting angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-30
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-05-10 09:19:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5579992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jujubiest/pseuds/jujubiest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Please. Be him. Just this once…be him again for me.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Last Request

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea what the fuck is wrong with me that made me write this awful thing. I've been unable to write all day and then THIS is the first thing I can force myself to bang out. I'm so sorry.

Killing the Flash. It was his goal for so long. He chased it with a single-minded hatred that nearly destroyed his own life and trapped him in the past for almost two decades. It was like living in hell, surrounded by corpses.

The only bright spot was, ironically, Barry Allen. The _Flash_. The man he tried so hard to kill. The man he had to create if he was ever going to get back home. And suddenly his hate was twisted up with all this sick fascination, this pride and this love and this horrible need to know _more_ , to know this intriguing person better.

In the end, it all came around to the same thing, the same inevitable goal. They were pulled towards one another again and again, across time, beyond death…opposites attract, after all, but that doesn’t mean they’re happy to meet in the middle when they do. It was as though they couldn’t exist in the same universe without seeking each other’s destruction, for any of the ever-growing number of reasons they kept giving each other.

He hated it by then, the constant war between them, but he didn’t know what there was to be done. He loved Barry Allen, but not so much that he was ready to lie down and die for him. Not yet, at least. He wasn’t entirely sure that day wouldn’t come, some day, if they kept on long enough.

They didn’t.

He stood over Barry Allen’s feebly-stirring body, and didn’t know what to feel. Once upon a time it would have been triumph, but now that triumph was hollowed out to exhaustion, a gruesome relief. This wasn’t what he wanted, not anymore.

Kneeling down, he placed a hand against Barry’s heart. He would do it quick, as painless as possible. He could give Barry that much, at least.

“I’m sorry, Barry,” he whispered, and steeled himself for the killing blow.

“Wait,” Barry choked out, his voice hoarse and weak, painful to listen to. Eobard listened anyway, leaning in to catch the barely-audible words.

“Please. Be him. Just this once…be him again for me.”

His hand tightened involuntarily on Barry’s chest, fisting the fire-resistant fabric and obscuring the lightning bolt insignia. Barry might as well have reached his fist through Eobard’s chest and squeezed his heart until it burst.

“How can you ask me that?” He said, his tone angry and pleading.

“You owe me,” Barry gasped out. “You’re getting what you always wanted. You can afford to give me this.”

 _But this isn’t what I want_ , Eobard thought desperately, though he knew there was nothing to be done about it now. He was going to kill Barry, because he had to if they ever wanted this to end. And Barry was right; he owed him a last request, no matter how much it broke his heart to give it.

“Fine.” And then his face changed…not his features, but his expression. The cold eyes warmed, the brow furrowed, the mouth pressed itself into a thin, worried line.

“Mr. Allen,” he said, his voice a husky almost-whisper, not his own, one he hadn’t used in years. “Barry, can you hear me?”

Barry smiled through his haze of pain and near-unconsciousness. He opened his mouth to speak, then coughed instead, blood painting his lips.

“Dr. Wells,” he rasped out. “You’re here.”

“Of course I’m here, Barry, of course.” He wanted so badly to reach out and touch, brush his hair back from his bloody forehead, give some real sense of comfort, anything. But that wasn’t something Dr. Harrison Wells had ever done, and so he couldn’t do it now beyond a desperate squeeze to Barry’s arm, a grip on his shoulder. It would break the illusion, his last gift to Barry.

“Always…there when I need you,” he whispered, and the gratitude in his voice cut Eobard to the quick. He _heard_ something inside him, some resolve or the last shred of his sanity, snap in two.

“Barry, you have to listen to me now,” he said, his voice urgent. “You need to get up. Do you understand? You need to fight. You can still win this, Barry…I know you can. You can beat him once and for all. But you have to _get up_.”

 _Please_ , a part of him begged. _Please, listen. Please get up and fight._

He realized now, if Barry would just stand up and fight, he would die for him. He would let Barry kill him, so long as the last thing he saw was Barry walking away from him, alive and strong.

But Barry wasn’t going to get up, and they both knew it.

_Another day, another world…Barry Allen flies into the room and crashes into his desk, gasping for breath, eyes rolling desperately from his face to Cisco’s as he tries in vain to force air down his windpipe and into his lungs. They had saved him then._

He coughed again, weakly this time, ending in a painful-sounding gurgle that made Eobard wince in sympathy.

“It hurts.”

“I know…it’s okay, Barry. It’s going to be okay. I’m going to make the pain go away, okay? I’m going to make it stop hurting.” He squeezed the words past a throat almost too tight to allow it, eyes burning, chest aching.

_In another life he watches Barry run faster than he ever has before, pushing right past all his previous limits and making it look utterly effortless. His breath quickens at the sight of that lightning streaking past, and he imagines he can feel it flickering over his own skin again. Soon, he thinks. But for now he’s happy just to watch Barry run._

“Please,” Barry begged. He reached up a gloved hand and grasped Eobard’s arm, his grip so weak he could barely feel it.

 _Barry screaming_ no _, screaming out of fear for_ him _. Barry across the room one moment and beside him the next, arms wrapping around him, pulling him out of the line of fire just in time. Green eyes boring into his, so full of relief and concern._

“Please, Dr. Wells. I just want it all to stop.”

_You’ll never be truly happy, Barry Allen, trust me._

Eobard wished he could have been wrong. Wished either of them could have turned away from this fight.

_I know you._

Barry was looking up at him with wide green eyes, his face a rigid mask of pain. His hand shook where it gripped his arm. So many times he could have killed him back then and it would have hurt both of them less than this. Now there was nothing he wanted less than to give Barry what he was asking for.

" _Please,_  Dr. Wells. _Eobard._ Please."

He closed his eyes and gave Barry what he wanted.


End file.
